Banned Books Week

Celebrate the Freedom to Read

Free People Read Freely ™

Quotations and Links

Notable Quotes

“Congress Shall Make No Law Respecting an Establishment of Religion, or Prohibiting the Free Exercise Thereof; or Abridging the Freedom of Speech, or of the Press; or the Right of the People Peaceably to Assemble, and To Petition the Government for a Redress of Grievances.”—First Amendment

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“First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.”—Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Ashcroft V. Free Speech Coalition (00-795) 198 F.3d 1083, affirmed.

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“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”—Harry Truman

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“If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.”—George Orwell, author, c. 1945

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"Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publications, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads. The purchase of a book or pamphlet today may result in a subpoena tomorrow. Fear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall. The subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox lay hold. Some will fear to read what is unpopular, what the powers-that-be dislike. When the light of publicity may reach any student, any teacher, inquiry will be discouraged. The books and pamphlets that are critical of the administration, that preach an unpopular policy in domestic or foreign affairs, that are in disrepute in the orthodox school of thought will be suspect and subject to investigation. The press and its readers will pay a heavy price in harassment. But that will be minor in comparison with the menace of [345 U.S. 41, 58] the shadow which government will cast over literature that does not follow the dominant party line. If the lady from Toledo can be required to disclose what she read yesterday and what she will read tomorrow, fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, book stores, and homes of the land. Through the harassment of hearings, investigations, reports, and subpoenas government will hold a club over speech and over the press."—U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, UNITED STATES v. RUMELY, 345 U.S. 41 (1953)

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“For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that—either now or in the uncertain future—patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.”—The Eternal Value of PrivacybyBruce Schneier

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“[Confiscating a book and punishing its author] is a sign that one does not have a good case, or at least doesn't trust it enough to defend it with reasons and refute the objections. Some people even go so far as to consider prohibited or confiscated books to be the best ones of all, for the prohibition indicates that their authors wrote what they really thought rather than what they were supposed to think . . .”—Johann Lorenz Schmidt, 1741

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“If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”—U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1856–1941), Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357 (1927).

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Outside, even through the shut window pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no color in anything except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The black-mustachio'd face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at street level another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the Police Patrol, snooping into people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered.—George Orwell, 1984

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"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."—Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. U.S. (1928)

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“Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”—Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

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“I don't want to be shut out from the truth. If they ban books, they might as well lock us away from the world.”—Rory Edwards, 12, Washington Post, Getting It Down at Writing Camp

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“A popular government, without popular information, or the mean of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”—James Madison

“Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.”—Alfred Whitney Griswold, Essays on Education

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“Before the week is out, be a patriot: Encourage a child to fall in love with a book. Apply for a library card. And accept the ALA's invitation to Let Freedom Read.”—Linda Campbell, Star-Telegram Staff Writer, “Here's a novel thought: Don't restrict books”

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“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.”—Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

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“Protecting the safety of the American people is a solemn duty of the Congress; we must work tirelessly to prevent more tragedies like the devastating attacks of September 11th. We must prevent more children from losing their mothers, more wives from losing their husbands, and more firefighters from losing their heroic colleagues. But the Congress will fulfill its duty only when it protects both the American people and the freedoms at the foundation of American society. So let us preserve our heritage of basic rights. Let us practice as well as preach that liberty. And let us fight to maintain that freedom that we call America.”—U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold on the Anti-Terrorism Bill, 10/25/2001

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“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”—Noam Chomsky, speaking in a BBC television interview with John Pilger on The Late Show (1992)

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When books are challenged, restricted, removed, or banned, an atmosphere of suppression exists. The author may make revisions, less for artistic reasons than to avoid controversy. The editor and publisher may alter text or elect not to publish for economic and marketing reasons. Staff in bookstores and libraries may find published works too controversial and, fearing reprisals, will choose not to purchase those materials. The fear of the consequences of censorship is as damaging as, or perhaps more damaging than, the actual censorship attempt. After all, when a published work is banned, it can usually be found elsewhere. Unexpressed ideas, unpublished works, unpurchased books are lost forever.—2000 Banned Books Week Resource Guide

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“If we are to violate the Constitution, will the people submit to our unauthorized acts? Sir, they ought not to submit; they would deserve the chains that these measures are forging for them. The country will swarm with informers, spies, delators and all the odious reptile tribe that breed in the sunshine of a despotic power...[T]he hours of the most unsuspected confidence, the intimacies of friendship, or the recesses of domestic retirement afford no security. The companion whom you most trust, the friend in whom you must confide, the domestic who waits in your chamber, all are tempted to betray your imprudent or unguarded follie; to misrepresent your words; to convey them, distorted by calumny, to the secret tribunal where jealousy presides — where fear officiates as accuser and suspicion is the only evidence that is heard...Do not let us be told, Sir, that we excite a fervour against foreign aggression only to establish a tyranny at home; that [...] we are absurd enough to call ourselves ‘free and enlightened’ while we advocate principles that would have disgraced the age of Gothic barbarity and establish a code compared to which the ordeal is wise and the trial by battle is merciful and just.”—Edward Livingston, opposing the Alien & Sedition bills of 1798, in Congress

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“I used to think censorship simply meant 'the suppressing or deleting [of] parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds,' as the Random House Webster’s College Dictionary puts it. But since reading Places I Never Meant to Be by Judy Blume (see #267), perhaps the most censored writer in the United States, I’ve come to agree with the definition she quotes from The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia: '[The] official restriction of any expression believed to threaten the political social, or moral order.' Here the idea of a threat to the status quo seems especially important in these perilous times.”—Pat Holt, Holt Uncensored #272

“In times like these, we are tempted to defer to authority in the name of security and victory, to mistake panic for patriotism, and to look the other way as secrecy, censorship and self-censorship take the place of reasoned policy-making. To surrender to such temptations is to compound the tragedies of Sept. 11.”—Paul McMasters, Denial of access shushes the democratic dialogue

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“Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.”—ALA Library Bill of Rights

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“The Constitution exists precisely so that opinions and judgments, including esthetic and moral judgments about art and literature, can be formed, tested, and expressed. What the Constitution says is that these judgments are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority. Technology expands the capacity to choose; and it denies the potential of this revolution if we assume the Government is best positioned to make these choices for us.”—Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy

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“Every legislative limitation upon utterance, however valid, may in a particular case serve as an inroad upon the freedom of speech which the Constitution protects.”—Supreme Court Justice Stanley F. Reed

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“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”—Benjamin Franklin

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“Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free to develop their faculties; and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.”—U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1856–1941), Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357 (1927)

“We should build respect and understanding between the diverse cultures of the world. We should help construct communities where people of different backgrounds can live together as neighbors. Freedom is something for which we must fight, not by limiting it but by strengthening it.”—Alex Byrne, Chair of the IFLA/FAIFE Committee

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“We uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources.”—ALA Code of Ethics

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“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”—Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989)

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“Liberty of speech inviteth and proveketh liberty to be used again,and so bringeth much to a man's knowledge.”—Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 1605

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“We must teach students about their First Amendment rights rather than restrict their use of particular books and materials. As educators, we must encourage students to express their own opinions while respecting the views of others.”—Protect Our Freedom of Speech, Teach It?, Pat Scales

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“The Library is an open sanctuary. It is devoted to individual intellectual inquiry and contemplation. Its function is to provide free access to ideas and information. It is a haven of privacy, a source of both cultural and intellectual sustenance for the individual reader.

Since it is thus committed to free and open inquiry on a personal basis, the Library must remain open, with access to it always guaranteed.”—Robert Vosper

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“Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.”—Salman Rushdie

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“It will be asked whether one would care to have one’s young daughter read these books. I suppose that by the time she is old enough to wish to read them she will have learned the biologic facts of life and the words that go with them. There is something seriously wrong at home if those facts have not been met and faced and sorted by then; it is not children so much as parents that should receive our concern about this. I should prefer that my own three daughters meet the facts of life and the literature of the world in my library than behind a neighbor’s barn, for I can face the adversary there directly. If the young ladies are appalled by what they read, they can close the book at the bottom of page one; if they read further, they will learn what is in the world and in its people, and no parents who have been discerning with their children need fear the outcome. Nor can they hold it back, for life is a series of little battles and minor issues, and the burden of choice is on us all, every day, young and old.”—Judge Curtis Bok, Commonwealth v. Gordon, 66 Pa. D. & C. 101, 110.

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“God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.”—Dame Rebecca West

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“Damn all expurgated books; the dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.”—Walt Whitman

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“Only the suppressed word is dangerous.”—Ludwig Börne

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“What happened was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to be governed by surprise, to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believe that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. ~ The crises and reforms (real reforms too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter. ~ To live in the process is absolutely not to notice it — please try to believe me — unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted.’ ~ Believe me this is true. Each act, each occasion is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. ~ Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we did nothing) . . . You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.”—A German professor describing the coming of fascism in They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer

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“Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech.”—Benjamin Franklin

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“[I]t’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.”—Judy Blume

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“For books are not absolutely dead things, but ... do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand unless warriors be used, as good almost kill a Man a good Book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills Reason itself, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the Earth; but a good Book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”—Areopagitica, John Milton, 1644

“The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack. Private groups and public authorities in various parts of the country are working to remove or limit access to reading materials, to censor content in schools, to label “controversial” views, to distribute lists of “objectionable” books or authors, and to purge libraries. These actions apparently rise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We, as citizens devoted to reading and as librarians and publishers responsible for disseminating ideas, wish to assert the public interest in the preservation of the freedom to read.”—Freedom to Read Statement

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“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”—UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights

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“I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this [i.e., the purchase of an apparent geological or astronomical work] can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offense against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason. If [this] book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God’s sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we choose.”—Thomas Jefferson to N. G. Dufief, 1814. ME 14:127

“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”—Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson,West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)

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“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”—Areopagitica, John Milton, 1644

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“[L]ibraries in the United States can contribute to a future that values and protects freedom of speech in a world that celebrates both our similarities and our differences, respects individuals and their beliefs, and holds all persons truly equal and free.”—Libraries: An American Value

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”—On Liberty, John Stuart Mill

“Now that eighteen-year-olds have the right to vote, it is obvious that they must be allowed the freedom to form their political views on the basis of uncensored speech before they turn eighteen, so that their minds are not a blank when they first exercise the franchise. And since an eighteen-year-old’s right to vote is a right personal to him rather than a right to be exercised on his behalf by his parents, the right of parents to enlist the aid of the state to shield their children from ideas of which the parents disapprove cannot be plenary either. People are unlikely to become well-functioning, independent-minded adults and responsible citizens if they are raised in an intellectual bubble.”—Seventh District Judge Richard Posner, American Amusement Machine Association, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Teri Kendrick, et al., Defendants-Appellees (2001)

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“Every man—in the development of his own personality—has the right to form his own beliefs and opinions. Hence, suppression of belief, opinion and expression is an affront to the dignity of man, a negation of man’s essential nature.”—Toward a General Theory of the First Amendment, Thomas Emerson

Notable Links

1966 Tibet
Tibet had been occupied by Communist China since 1950. In 1966, the Cultural Revolution wrought havoc in this country too. Red Guards invaded the leading monastery in Tibet and destroyed frescoes and irreplaceable historic manuscripts. Elsewhere in the country, heavy damage was inflicted as well, including the burning of religious and historic manuscripts. E.M. Neterowicz, The Tragedy of Tibet. Washington, 1989, p.61–62

“Every year, books in the U.S. and around the world are challenged. Some of the challenged books are banned, some aren’t. The punishment for ignoring these bans range from almost nonexistent to severe. Here are some sites that deal with who bans these books, and why.”

“Most would-be book banners act with what they consider to be the highest motives — protecting themselves, their families and communities from perceived injustices and evil and preserving the values and ideals they would have the entire society embrace. The result, however, is always and ever the denial of another’s right to read. This Web page is offered in support of our basic right to read guaranteed in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.”

“The bonfire was a very efficient form of censorship in an age when books were handwritten and existed in few copies. But in the era of printing and mass markets, burning a book has been reduced to merely a shocking gesture. To be effective, censors have had to devise other methods of restricting access to publications deemed offensive or dangerous.”

“As long as humans have sought to communicate, others have sought to prevent them. Every day someone tries to restrict or control what can be said, written, sung, or broadcast. Almost every idea ever thought has proved objectionable to one person or another, and almost everyone has sometimes felt the world would be a better place if only ‘so and so’ would go away.”

“An all too common pastime in the United States is banning books. Sad, frightening — and far too frequent. Who bans books? Libraries, schools, entire towns, and sometimes, in the past, the United States government.”

“There are also inexplicable gaps in the canon of banned books. Yes, Salman Rushdie’s life is still in danger though the fatwa was technically lifted, but Taslima Nasrin still has a Islamic death warrant on her head because of her novel Shame. I’m sure a few bookstores and libraries will trot out The Satanic Verses, but I’ll eat my hat if more than five in the whole country show Nasrin’s novel.”

“Banned Books Week is a time to celebrate literature and examine the roots of intolerance and ignorance that fuel efforts to censor the arts and free expression. Book censorship is neither infrequent nor an issue of the past. Books with clear artistic and cultural merit are still challenged frequently by those who want to control what others read. The battle against those who would remove materials from libraries, schools, and bookstores continues.”

“The Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, DC, has an amazing visual impact. No matter how many times you hear the number of casualties, it’s nothing compared to seeing the names. It’s too much to deal with — it’s overwhelming, and it’s meant to be. It’s meant to show you, one name at a time, the costs of war. There’s been another war going on, all this time, right here at home. And I want to take few minutes to overwhelm you with a few names of my own.”

In May 2003 the Norwegian Minister of Culture and Church Affairs, Valgerd Svarstad Haugland, presented the Beacon for Freedom of Expression database and Web site to the new library in Alexandria. Beacon for Freedom of Expression is an international database on censorship of books and newspapers, and literature on freedom of expression, produced by the former Norwegian Forum for Freedom of Expression (NFFE). Beacon for Freedom of Expression is funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs, and is one of Norway's gifts to the new library in Alexandria.

“During Banned Books Week, Amnesty International directs attention to the plight of individuals who are persecuted because of the writings that they produce, circulate or read. Traditionally, Banned Books Week activities take place at the end of September — but the featured cases are not confined to a week. They continue to need your action.”

“Children who aren’t afraid to think about that kind of future, and whose parents aren’t afraid to encourage them to do so, will conclude that Aldous Huxley’s world without intimacy and attachment is a dreadful one.”

Links to non-ALA sites have been provided because these sites may have information of interest. Neither the American Library Association nor the Office for Intellectual Freedom necessarily endorses the views expressed or the facts presented on these sites; and furthermore, ALA and OIF do not endorse any commercial products that may be advertised or available on these sites.